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Facts to Get Back on Track When Conversations on Russia’s War in Ukraine Derail
From the average Joe to the famous one—Rogan—Russian propaganda has successfully seeped into both everyday conversations and influential platforms, constructing anti-Ukrainian sentiments using sensationalism to elicit an emotional reaction from people otherwise unfamiliar with Ukraine, its culture, politics, and history.
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![Maria Kuchapska]( "Maria Kuchapska")
-8fda54010650befcec1e2c4d694c566b.jpg "Maria Kuchapska")
Here, we tackle five common propaganda points with evidence and facts.
Fallacy 1: Ukraine started the war.
Before Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, Donbas was conflict-free, separatism was a non-issue, and Ukraine remained a neutral state without a strong inclination to join NATO.
Leading up to the full-scale invasion in February 2022, the possibility of Ukraine’s accession into NATO was still decades away, reports the Atlantic Council. Russia’s lukewarm response to Finland and Sweden’s recent NATO membership proves that the war was never about NATO but rather a result of its own colonial aspirations to reinstate the borders of the former Soviet Union.
Putin's war is not the result of NATO enlargement. Putin's war is the cause of NATO enlargement.
US Secretary of Defense
Finland and Sweden’s recent accession to NATO, driven by Russia’s actions in Ukraine, underscores that NATO expansion is a response to Russian aggression—not a precursor to it. While Russia claims that it’s becoming encircled by NATO, only 11% of Russia’s territory borders a NATO member state, even after Finland’s accession.
It’s Russia, not NATO, that forcefully inserts itself into independent countries. Attempting to conceal its involvement in the east of Ukraine, the Kremlin insisted for years that “self-organized ‘separatist’ groups in eastern Ukraine were responsible for the aggression”—despite a lack of evidence to support this narrative. Following the occupation of Crimea, Moscow bussed in Russian citizens to organize and fuel small but public anti-West pro-Russian rallies that, consequently, began popping up in the south and east of the country, further fomenting the myth of separatism.
Following this, masked men stormed many of the government buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk regions and, in May 2014, announced the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” and “Luhansk People’s Republic”—neither of which are recognized by Ukraine or the international community, notwithstanding Russia’s allies.
In response to Russia’s brazen breach of international law and Ukraine’s territorial integrity, Ukraine countered the Russian forces overtaking Donbas with the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO). The Ukrainian ATO directly targeted invading Russian forces, never civilians.
Fallacy 2: Arming Ukraine is an escalation
This was American podcaster Joe Rogan’s overarching message on his November 22nd episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. Rogan, known for his controversial takes rooted in disinformation, currently ranks 3rd on Apple Podcasts. In the episode, he said, “You fucking people [Ukrainians] are about to start world war three,” by striking back into Russia with American weapons and claimed that the Russian war in Ukraine was a proxy war—a common Kremlin talking point that frequently defers to the manufactured (non)issue of NATO encroachment and “bio-labs.”
Ukrainians—from heavyweight boxing champion Volodymyr Klitschko to former Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba—had something to say in response to Rogan’s Moscow propaganda.
Denigrating Ukrainians without giving them a chance to respond isn’t just unfair—it’s emblematic of a larger issue: the persistent tendency to discuss Ukraine without involving Ukrainians.
Former Foreign Affairs Minister of Ukraine
. @joerogan , I disagree pic.twitter.com/tSGvwUnXOQ
— Klitschko (@Klitschko) November 24, 2024
Yale professor Timothy Snyder addresses this tendency, confronting Rogan’s WWIII warmongering that can be summarized in 3 points:
Hysteria, not Ukrainian self-defense, heightens the risk of WWIII. Using the analogy of a house on fire, where Ukrainians are the firefighters, the solution is clear: support them with resources. "It makes no sense to blame them for Russia's invasion, nor to hinder them from doing their job." Restricting Ukraine only allows the flames—the Russian invasion—to spread further.
Arming Ukraine and allowing deep strikes de-escalates the risk of nuclear war. “If the Ukrainians had yielded to this nuclear blackmail and not resisted, then the world would now be covered with nuclear weapons. The lesson would have been that every country that does not have them must build them in order to resist threats such as Russia's.”
The children of Russia’s top officials and oligarchs enjoy lavish luxury living in the West: Paris, London, New York. What does this have to do with nuclear war? Nothing—and that’s the entire point. If nuclear war was looming, Russia’s top officials and billionaires would be recalling their family members from their decadent lives in the West to bunkers in the Russian countryside. Yet, that hasn’t happened. And it won’t—because Moscow is bluffing. Russia can’t contend with the American military and Putin knows it. Therefore, the Kremlin relies on the technique it knows best: sowing fear-based hysteria among the general public, using the likes of Rogan as their American mouthpiece.
Fallacy 3: Ukraine is prolonging the war rather than choosing peace
Life under Russia is anything but peaceful and Russia will never stop its imperial expansion at the currently occupied territories, even if Ukraine were to surrender them in exchange for security guarantees—which Russia never honors.
Russia did not stop at Transnistria in 1922-93, at Chechnya in 1994-96 and again from 1999-2009, at Georgia in 1992-93 and again in 2008, at the initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, or at Syria in 2015.
Today Georgia, tomorrow Ukraine, the day after tomorrow – the Baltic States and later, perhaps, time will come for my country, Poland.
Former President of Poland
Two years after his speech, Kaczyński was killed in a plane crash claiming 96 lives as part of a Kremlin assassination plot, reported an investigative panel.
Today, Russians carry out various torture methods in occupied regions of Ukraine—the torture basements in Kherson became known and documented after its liberation by the Ukrainian army. Ceding currently occupied territories would result in abandoning locals to continued torture, imprisonment, and often—death. The violence doesn’t end in the occupation—Russians have been reportedly torturing and killing their own people.
Leaving people under Russian occupation would mean that Ukrainian men in these territories could be forcibly conscripted by Russian forces to fight against their own families. This is already happening to Ukrainian locals from Russian-occupied Mariupol, as well as occupied areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, who have been forcefully transported to Crimea.
First, these men are tortured and imprisoned to coerce them into accepting Russian passports. Then, on top of the emotional and psychological trauma of being conscripted by the enemy, they are sent to near-certain death given Moscow’s heavy losses on the battlefield—causing more loss of life, not less. Capturing and conscripting civilians to fight against their own country is yet another breach of international law, specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention, as outlined by Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Ministry. The Ministry also reminds potential conscripts of the “I Want to Live” project and urges their surrender to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
A ceasefire would send a clear message to Russia that it can continue its expansion westward, unchecked, especially given its historical pattern of breaking international agreements. Defeat of the Russian imperial project with support from the West is the only option. True peace comes with justice and reparations. For that to happen, Ukraine must win, and Russia—held accountable.
Fallacy 4: Ukrainians voted in referendums to join Russia.
Referendums at gunpoint are, put lightly, coercion. Russian troops invaded, killed, injured people, and occupied their land. Then they force locals to vote, going door to door, personally keeping an eye on them, reported Serhiy Hayday, former Luhansk governor. In Zaporizhzhia region’s Enerhodar, a local told the BBC how residents must voice their choice to the Russian soldiers, who record it themselves. In Kherson, Russian armed militants patrol polling stations, with soldiers holding ballot boxes in public. A local woman had to pretend she forgot her passport to avoid “voting.”
Looking back, the Kremlin-staged 2014 Crimean “referendum” is a glaring example of Russia’s blatant manipulation: Sevastopol’s population, for example, at the time was 385,462, including children (who, to remind, cannot vote), yet the occupying authorities claimed 474,137 pro-secession votes—an absurd 123% turnout, echoing Russia’s own sham presidential elections.
A decade after Russia’s invasion, Ukrainians—including those in the most south and east regions—desire to remain in Ukraine. While Kremlin polls claim 99% of the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” residents support joining Russia, independent surveys show only 18% in Donetsk and Luhansk and 16% in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia back occupation.
The United States will never recognize Ukrainian territory as anything other than part of Ukraine. Russia’s referenda are a sham—a false pretext to try to annex parts of Ukraine by force in flagrant violation of international law, including the United Nations Charter.
President of the United States
Fallacy 5: Ukrainian society is a neo-Nazi state
As of June, far-right populists held 52% of seats in Hungary, 43% in France, and 42% in Italy. In contrast, the Ukrainian right-wing party Svoboda secured only 1 parliamentary seat out of 450 in 2019, the most recent election before the full-scale invasion. This is unsurprising as support for the far-right has failed miserably in Ukraine since its independence in 1991. Even since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, centrist parties have continued to dominate.
Right-wing populism has been on the rise worldwide since the financial crisis of 2008 and more acutely since the 2015 refugee crisis. However, this concerning rise in far-right sympathy extends beyond frustrations around the economy and migration policies—it leads directly back to the Kremlin.
In September, the far-right Austrian Freedom Party FPÖ, founded by an SS officer and Nazi lawmaker, secured 29% of the national election votes, outperforming both its conservative and social-democratic competitors. Similar patterns favoring far-right political parties have gained serious traction in France, the Netherlands, and Germany.
Although Putin claims its war on Ukraine is a “denazification” process, Russia has in fact co-opted many European democracies with Moscow-backed officials. In 2016, the FPÖ signed a friendship agreement with Moscow and today, the party calls for an end to Russian sanctions and to limit military aid to Ukraine.
Russia encourages, funds, inspires, and rallies a string of radical and extremist actors who [...] act as political disruptors in their respective countries.
The Hague-based International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT)
ICCT examines the cases of ten European countries where Russia influences and penetrates local far-right movements to promote violent destabilization of the democratic order.
Another frequent Kremlin talking point is the labeling of Ukraine’s Azov Brigade as radical, extremist, anti-semitic, and homophobic, in an attempt to discredit those who heroically held back Russian advances on Mariupol from the Azovstal steel plant under unimaginable circumstances.
In reality, the Azov Brigade is an elite fighting force with thousands of members from various backgrounds; among its ranks are Jewish and Muslim troops. While some may hold more traditional values, they are far from radical.
When the Azov Brigade was the recipient of a $10,000 donation from Ukraine Pride, which they put towards communication equipment, the wife of an Azov Brigade soldier, Yulia Fedosyuk, said that she was grateful to the organization for its financial assistance as Azov’s reputation, which had been constructed by “architects of Russian propaganda in the Western media, is, to put it mildly, untrue.” She added, “I, my husband Arseniy, and many Azov soldiers are conservatives, but none of us have ever supported violence against members of the LGBTQ community.”
This relationship is just one illustration of pluralism and tolerance in Ukrainian society.
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